Description:
Three input modalities for manipulation techniques in Mobile Augmented Reality have been compared. The first one employs only multi-touch input. The second modality uses the movements of the device. Finally, the third one is a hybrid approach based on a combination of the two previous modalities. A user evaluation (N=12) on a 6 DOF docking task suggests that combining multi-touch input and device movement offers the best results in terms of task completion time and efficiency. Nonetheless, using solely the device is more intuitive and performs worse only in large rotations. Given that mobile devices are increasingly supporting movement tracking, the presented results encourage the addition of device movement as an input modality.

Description:
Indirect augmented reality (IAR) utilizes pre-captured omnidirectional images and offline superimposition of virtual objects for achieving high-quality geometric and photometric registration. Meanwhile, IAR causes inconsistency between the real world and the pre-captured image. This paper describes the first-ever study focusing on the temporal inconsistency issue in IAR. We propose a novel IAR system which reflects real-world illumination change by selecting an appropriate image from a set of images pre-captured under various illumination. Results of a public experiment show that the proposed system can improve the realism in IAR.

Description:
This work describes a camera-based method for the calibration of optical See-Through Glasses (STGs). A new calibration technique is introduced for calibrating every single display pixel of the STGs in order to overcome the disadvantages of a parametric model. A non-parametric model compared to the parametric one has the advantage that it can also map arbitrary distortions. The new generation of STGs using waveguide-based displays will have higher arbitrary distortions due to the characteristics of their optics. First tests show better accuracies than in previous works. By using cameras which are placed behind the displays of the STGs, no error prone user interaction is necessary. It is shown that a high accuracy tracking device is not necessary for a good calibration. A camera mounted rigidly on the STGs is used to find the relations between the system components. Furthermore, this work elaborates on the necessity of a second subsequent calibration step which adapts the STGs to a specific user. First tests prove the theory that this subsequent step is necessary.

Description:
This work presents three techniques for 3D manipulation on mobile touch devices, taking the specifics of mobile AR scenes into account. We compare the common direct manipulation technique with two indirect techniques, which utilize only the thumbs to perform the transformations. The evaluation of the manipulation variants is conducted in a mixed reality (MR) environment which takes advantage of the controlled conditions of a full virtual reality (VR) system. A study with 18 participants shows that the two-thumb method tops the other techniques. It performs better with respect to the total manipulation time and total number of gestures.

Description:
Information presentation techniques are important in augmented reality applications as they are in the traditional desktop user interface (WIMP) and web user interface. This paper introduces view management for a web-based augmented reality mobile platform. We use a webized mobile AR browser called Insight that provides separation of the application logic, including the tracking engine and AR content, so that the view management logic and contents are easy to reuse. In addition, the view management is able to accommodate in-situ context of an AR application.

Description:
Autism or Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive development disorder causing impairment in thinking, feeling, hearing, speaking and social interaction. For this reason, children suffering from autism need to follow special training in order to increase their ability to learn new skills and knowledge. These children have propensity to be attracted by the technology devices especially virtual animations. The interest of this research work is to explore and study the use of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) system for training the children with ASD based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) techniques. This system assists in teaching children about new pictures or objects along with the associated keyword or matching sentence in an immersive way with fast interaction. The preliminary prototype demonstrates satisfactory performance of the proposed AR/VR system working in laboratory conditions.

Description:
Learning how to think critically, analyze sources, and develop an evidence-based account is central to learning history. Often, learners struggle to understand inquiry, to apply it in specific scenarios, and to remain engaged while learning it. This paper discusses preliminary design of a mobile AR system that explicitly teaches inquiry strategies for historical sources and engages students to practice in an augmented real-world context while scaffolding their progression. The overarching question guiding our project is how and to what extent AR technologies can be used to support learning of critical inquiry strategies and processes.

Description:
Consumer of the shelf heads up displays with onboard cameras and processing power have recently become available. Evaluations of a naive implementation of video-see-through augmented reality suggest that their small display and off-axis camera presents usability problems. We panned and zoomed a composited video feed on the Google Glass device to center the augmented reality context within the display and to give the appearance of a fixed distance to the content. We pilot tested both the panned and zoomed display against a naive implementation and found that users preferred the view-stabilized version.

Description:
This poster introduces a fully immersive Mixed Reality system we have recently developed, where the user is free to walk inside a virtual scenario while wearing a HMD. The novelty of the system lies in the fact that users can see and use their real hands - by means of a Kinect-like camera mounted on the HMD - in order to naturally interact with the virtual objects. Our working hypothesis are that the introduction of the photorealistic capture of users' hands in a coherently rendered virtual scenario induces in them a strong feeling of presence and embodiment without the need of using a synthetic 3D modelled avatar as a representation of the self. We also argue that the users' ability of grasping and manipulating virtual objects using their own hands not only provides an intuitive interaction experience, but also improves self-perception as well as the perception of the environment.

Description:
Much research in augmented reality (AR) technology attempts to match the textures of virtual objects with real world. However, the textures of real objects must also be rendered consistent with virtual information. This paper proposes a method for representing the degradation of real objects in virtual time. Real-world depth information, used to build three-dimensional models of real objects, is captured by a RGB-D camera. The degradation of real objects is then represented by superimposing the degradation texture onto the real object.

Description:
Typically handheld AR systems utilize a single back-facing camera and the screen in order to implement device transparency. This creates the dual-view problem a consequence of virtual transparency which does not match true transparency—what the user would see looking through a transparent glass pane. The dual-view problem affects usability of handheld AR systems and is commonly addressed though user-perspective rendering solutions. Whilst such approach produces promising results, the complexity of implementing user-perspective rendering and the fact it does not solve all sources that produce the dual-view problem, means it only ever addresses part of the problem. This paper seeks to create a more complete solution for the dual-view problem that will be applicable to readily available handheld-device. We pursue this goal by designing, implementing and evaluating a novel interaction paradigm we call ‘contact-view’. By utilizing the back and front-facing camera and the environment base-plane texture—predefined or incrementally created on the fly, we enable placing the device directly on top of the base-plane. As long as the position of the phone in relation to the base-plane is known, appropriate segment of the occluded base-plane can be rendered on the device screen, result of which is transparency in which dual-view problem is eliminated.

Description:
In this work, we present an approach for optimizing targets for natural feature-based pose tracking such as used in Augmented Reality applications. Our contribution is an approach for locally optimizing a given tracking target instead of applying global optimizations, such as proposed in the literature. The local optimization together with visualized trackability rating leads to a tool to create high quality tracking targets.

Description:
User experience assessment of new augmented reality (AR) technology is an increasingly important area of research, including industrial applications. In our domain, many services field technicians have traditionally relied on stand alone tools with restricted connectivity and information visualization capabilities for on-site diagnostics and maintenance. With new hand-held and wearable AR technology and recent developments in cloud-based computing, new services can be delivered so that they are more interactive and more connected, with a goal to ultimately improve the efficiency and productivity of the technician. It is fundamental for acceptance that this technology enables a high quality of user experience, and a user-centered design framework is necessary for the testing and evaluation of these new technologies. This paper presents a testbed that we are building at United Technologies Research Center that leverages user-centered design framework for developing and deploying AR applications both for hand held devices as well as wearable AR glasses. We present two test cases from our testbed: (a) a hand-held based AR application for active diagnostics in building HVAC systems; (b) an interactive AR application for aircraft engine maintenance based on wearable see-through AR glasses.

Description:
We propose a novel method for interaction of humans with real objects in their surrounding combining Visual Search and Augmented Reality (AR). This method is based on utilizing a smartwatch tethered to a smartphone, and it is designed to provide a more user-friendly experience compared to approaches based only on a handheld device, such as a smartphone or a tablet computer. The smartwatch has a built-in camera, which enables scanning objects without the need to take the smartphone out of the pocket. An image captured by the watch is sent wirelessly to the phone that performs Visual Search and subsequently informs the smartwatch whether digital information related to the object is available or not. We thereby distinguish between three cases. If no information is available or the object recognition failed, the user is notified accordingly. If there is digital information available that can be presented using the smartwatch display and/or audio output, it is presented there. The third case is that the recognized object has digital information related to it, which would be beneficial to see in an Augmented Reality view spatially registered with the object in real-time. Then the smartwatch informs the user that this option exists and encourages using the smartphone to experience the Augmented Reality view. Thereby, the user only needs to take the phone out of the pocket in case Augmented Reality content is available, and when the content is of interest for the user.

Description:
In outdoor Mixed Reality (MR), objects distant from the observer suffer from an effect called aerial perspective that fades the color of the objects and blends it to the environmental light color. The aerial perspective can be modeled using a physics-based approach; however, handling the changing and unpredictable environmental illumination is demanding. We present a turbidity-based method for rendering a virtual object with aerial perspective effect in a MR application. The proposed method first estimates the turbidity by matching luminance distributions of sky models and a captured omnidirectional sky image. Then the obtained turbidity is used to render the virtual object with aerial perspective.

Description:
In Augmented Reality (AR) the real world is enhanced by superimposed digital information commonly visualized through augmented annotations. The visualized data comes from many different data sources. One increasingly important source of data is user generated content. Unfortunately, AR tools that support user generated content are not common hence the majority of augmented data within AR applications is not generated utilizing AR technology. In this paper we discuss the main reasons for this and evaluate how the contact-view paradigm could enhance annotation authoring process within the class of tabletop size AR workspaces. This evaluation is based on a prototype that allows musicians to annotate a music score manuscript utilizing freehand drawing on top of device screen. Experimentation showed the potential of contact-view paradigm as an annotation authoring method that performs well in single and collaborative multi-user situations.